To establish greater engagement with the faculty and to bring the perspectives and sensibilities of faculty to the governance of the institution, the Board of Trustees of Arcadia University unanimously approved the addition of a University faculty member to the Board of Trustees. The faculty trustee does not act as a representative of the University faculty but instead will bring the perspectives of faculty to governance issues and will adhere to the same fiduciary and other standards that are required of all Trustees of the University.

To that end, the Board is pleased to announce that Amy Widestrom, PhD, associate professor of Politics & Government and chair of the Department of Historical & Political Studies, has been appointed as a Trustee to the Board of Trustees in August 2023. The four-year appointment represents the first time that a faculty member will sit on the Board with full voting privileges.  

The Board also unanimously voted to appoint each elected Faculty Senate President as an ex-officio, non-voting member of the Board of Trustees and invite one or more faculty members to annually join each of the Board’s standing committees (except the Executive Committee) as non-voting members.

“We’re so pleased with this appointment of a dedicated, talented scholar and faculty member such as Dr. Amy Widestrom to serve on the Board of Trustees at Arcadia University,” said John Rollins, MBA, chair of the Board of Trustees at Arcadia. “Having a faculty member serve as a voting member will help to bring even more clarity and vision to the Board, and continue to ensure that a strong, collaborative relationship and meaningful engagement exists between our shared governance groups.”  

Dr. Widestrom joined Arcadia in 2012. She has received several awards for her scholarship, including the 2016 American Political Science Association’s Clarence Stone Scholar Award.

As chair of the Department of Historical & Political Studies, Dr. Widestrom is committed to Arcadia’s global mission and has traveled extensively with students abroad. Dr. Widestrom also traveled to Tanzania in February with Warren Haffar, PhD, director of the university’s International Peace & Conflict Resolution program, and Allyson McCreery, MA, associate director of the program, for the official relaunching of the Nyerere Centre for Peace Research.

A scholar of politics in America, Dr. Widestrom focuses and has published research on political disaffection and disenfranchisement. In 2015, she released a book titled Displacing Democracy: Economic Segregation in America that discusses the civic and political consequences of residential economic segregation in American cities. Other research includes the political effects of mass incarceration in the United States and and the effects of state-level politics and policy on inequality and wealth distribution in America.

The Board looks forward to welcoming Dr. Widestrom and Faculty-Senate President Angela Kachuyevski to its first meeting of the year in October.